Admin overview

The Overview is your admin home — the dashboard you land on whenever you open the admin area. It gives you a snapshot of your organisation and quick links to everything you'll do day to day. You'll find it at the top of the admin sidebar, marked Overview, just below the Subscription link.

Who can use this

Club admins and moderators can open the admin area and see the Overview. Admins can do everything; a moderator sees a slightly trimmed sidebar — any item they don't have permission for (for example Newsletters, which needs the news-publish permission) is simply hidden. The dashboard adapts the same way: cards and quick actions only appear when your role can act on them (for example, shop-order alerts only show if you can see orders, and Manage roles only shows for full admins). Everything you see only ever affects your own organisation.

What's on the page

From top to bottom, the dashboard shows:

• Homepage notice — a rose call-out at the very top while your homepage isn't live yet, because until then everyone who visits your site's front page sees a placeholder. It reads either Your homepage hasn't been created yet or Your homepage is still a draft, and its button takes you straight to the fix. The same notice appears on the Pages screen and on the placeholder itself. It disappears once your homepage is published.
• Setup prompts — friendly call-outs that only appear while something is unfinished, such as the Setup wizard card (with its progress bar and next step) or Connect your own domain. Don't want the wizard card any more? Click the ✕ in its corner to close it for good — the wizard stays reachable from the Getting started page in case you change your mind. (The one exception: if your homepage still isn't published after about a week, the card comes back once, because until then nobody can see your site at all.)
• Welcome hero — a greeting with quick buttons: + New news post, Edit pages and View public site →.
• Needs your attention — the triage strip, most urgent first: overdue membership applications, form responses awaiting a reply, paid shop orders waiting to be fulfilled, and a Coming up this week card listing your next published events. Each card carries a count and links straight to the page where you fix it. When nothing is waiting, a green all caught up note shows instead.
• Stat tiles — Active members, Pending applications, Pages and News posts, each clickable through to its section.
• Getting started link — a slim one-line pointer showing how many first-run steps remain. It opens the Getting started page, which holds the full checklist (theme, logo, choosing the modules you'll use, publishing your homepage, first news post, applications, email sender, navigation, bringing in your committee, and listing yourself in the directory) with a progress bar, plus a shortcut into the setup wizard. The Getting started page is also where the sample content card lives while any of our starter content is still on your site — see Clear the sample content below. The link disappears once everything is done.
• Recent news and Recent activity — your latest posts and a log of recent admin actions, side by side.
• Quick actions — a grid of shortcuts to common tasks.
• Refer a club (admins only) — your organisation's unique referral link, with a Copy link button and the progress of every club you've referred. Share the link with clubs you play against: when a referred club joins ClubHelix and starts a paid plan, your organisation and theirs each receive one free 28-day billing cycle. Statuses move from Signed up → Qualified — credit on its way → Free cycle credited as the referral progresses; the credit is applied by ClubHelix staff, so there's nothing more for you to do after sharing.
• Plan footer — your current plan and a Manage billing → link.

Step by step

Get oriented when you log in

1. Open the admin area; you arrive on the Overview.
2. Check Needs your attention first — it lists the things members are waiting on (unanswered form responses, unfulfilled shop orders, overdue applications) plus events coming up this week, most urgent at the front.
3. Read the stat tiles for a quick health check. A tile may show a note like +3 this week or 2 stale.

Finish your setup

1. Click the Getting started link to open the checklist page — each unticked item (choose a theme, upload your logo, choose the modules you'll use, set up your homepage, publish your first news post, approve applications, configure email sender, customise navigation) links straight to the right page, and every item ticks itself off automatically as you work.
2. Or click Continue wizard → to be walked through the rest step by step. Your website is already live from the moment you create your organisation — it's built from the starting design you picked when you signed up — so the wizard is about making it yours rather than building it from nothing. Three quick steps: Your logo, Colours, and Your words (read the pages the Helix Assistant has written for you and press Build it →), then a Done summary of what you built. Any step you'd rather not do can be ticked off with ✓ Mark as done, and a View your site ↗ link sits in the wizard header the whole way through.
3. The wizard keeps itself honest: anything you do from the normal admin pages counts automatically. Upload a logo from Branding, activate a theme from Theme, or add a teammate from Roles, and the matching wizard step ticks itself off — you never redo work you've already done.

What sign-up already asked you

Two of the questions on the sign-up form do real work, so it's worth knowing what they were for:

1. "Tell us about your organisation" — the couple of sentences you typed there are what the Helix Assistant writes your pages from. Left it blank? Nothing is broken; the assistant works from your name, your organisation type and your starting design instead, and you can give it a better description any time from the Your words wizard step.
2. "What will you use?" — the module checklist. Those ticks decide which parts of the platform switch on and which sample content your site is created with: leave Shop and Sponsors unticked and you'll never own a sample product or sponsor. Change your mind whenever you like from Features — turning a module on later doesn't add sample content, it just opens the section for your own.

Everything else about your site — the pages, the menus, the theme — came from the starting design you chose, which is why your site is already live and published before you ever open the wizard.

Let the assistant write your pages

The moment your organisation is created, the Helix Assistant starts rewriting your starter pages in your own words, in the background, while you get on with the logo and colours. By the time you reach the wizard's Your words step there's usually a draft waiting:

1. Still writing? You'll see a short progress screen. Your site is live and published either way — this step only changes the wording — so you're welcome to leave and come back.
2. Draft ready? You get a plain-English list of everything the assistant proposes to do. Nothing has changed on your site yet. Read it, then press Build it → to apply the lot, or Start over to throw the draft away and write your own brief instead.
3. No draft? If the background run never happened — you chose Blank site at sign-up, or something went wrong — the step shows the brief form instead: tick the pages you want, check the description, and press Draft my site with Helix. Already have a website? Paste its address under Already have a website? and the assistant reads it so your new site sounds like your club from the first draft.

You can re-run it as often as you like: each new draft replaces the last one, and no draft ever touches your live site until you press Build it →.

Clear the sample content

New sites are created with a little sample content — a couple of news posts, a couple of what's-on entries, your venue, and (if you ticked those modules) a few sponsors and shop products — so your site looks alive from the first minute instead of showing empty sections.

1. Open Getting started from the Overview's steps remaining link. While any of that content is still ours, an amber card sits near the top: Your site includes N sample items.
2. Press Remove sample content. The sample news, events, venue, sponsors and products go, the card disappears, and your site keeps rendering — the sections simply show your own content, or nothing, instead. Your contact form is deliberately left alone: your contact page is built around it, and it's a form you'd only have to recreate.
3. Anything you've edited is kept. Change one word in a sample news post and it's yours: removal skips it and leaves it published. Your website pages are never touched at all — this button only ever removes news posts, what's-on entries, venues, sponsors and products.

There's no rush and no penalty for leaving it: the card only ever appears on Getting started, never on your public site.

Ask the Helix Assistant

The Helix Assistant button floats at the bottom-right of every admin page. Ask it to change your public site (it always shows a preview you approve first), ask it how any part of ClubHelix works (it reads this help wiki before answering), or just say where you want to go — "take me to shop orders" — and it opens the right page for you.

Jump to any task

1. Use the sidebar on the left, grouped into sections (Website management, User management, Publish updates, Competitions, Revenue, Business management, System).
2. Type in the Find a page… box at the top of the sidebar to filter it instantly — a few letters replaces scrolling through the groups. Press Esc to clear and get the full sidebar back. Search only ever shows pages your role can open.
3. Hover an item and click the star to pin it to a Favourites group at the top. Click a section heading to collapse or expand it — your choices are remembered on this device.
4. Or use the search box in the middle of the top bar — click it, or press Ctrl-K (⌘K on a Mac) from anywhere in the admin. Open it before typing and it offers your recently opened pages, quick actions (new website page, news post, event) and the pages you use most. Type to search admin pages, website pages, news posts, members and email templates by name. Move with ↑ ↓, open with Enter, close with Esc.

Field reference

Tips & FAQ

• View public site → (top bar and hero) opens your live website so you can see what members see.
• Do I have to finish the wizard before my site is live? No. Your site is published from the second your organisation is created — the wizard only makes it yours. Skip the lot and you still have a working website.
• The assistant is still writing when I get to Your words. Leave it and come back; drafts normally take well under a minute. If a draft never turns up, the step quietly offers you the brief form instead, so you're never stuck.
• I don't want the assistant's draft. Press Start over on the review screen. The draft is discarded — your site is untouched, because nothing is applied until you press Build it → — and you get the brief form to try again with your own words.
• Where did the "What you need" step go? Onto the sign-up form, as What will you use?. Modules now live on Features and on the Getting started checklist. Old wizard links still work — they just land you back at the current step.
• How do I get rid of the sample news and events? Remove sample content on the Getting started page. Anything you've edited is treated as yours and stays.
• The bell in the top bar lists your notifications — click Open to follow one, or Clear all to dismiss them.
• A sidebar section is missing. Either it's collapsed (click the heading to expand) or your role doesn't have permission for it.
• Where do I manage my plan? Use the Subscription link at the top of the sidebar, or Manage billing → in the plan footer. See Subscription & billing.
• Related: Members, Applications, News, Pages, Theme and Activity log.